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Fenwick, Millicent

CANDIDATE DETAILS

Affiliation

Republican

Name

Millicent Fenwick

Address

Bernardsville, New Jersey , United States

None

Website

[Link]

Born

February 25, 1910

Died

September 16, 1992 (82 years)

Contributor

*crickets chirp*

Last Modifed

RBH
May 15, 2020 12:58pm

Tags

Protestant -

Info

United States Representatives
Republican of New Jersey
Ninety-fourth - Ninety-seventh Congresses
January 3, 1975 - January 3, 1983

Millicent Fenwick, like many women who have served in Congress, entered public affairs as a member of a local school board. Unlike most others, however, Fenwick served on the local board and participated in civic activities while carrying on another career unrelated to politics. After working for Vogue as a model, she served as an associate editor for that magazine and other Cond� Nast publications from 1938 to 1952. In 1948 she wrote Vogue's Book of Etiquette.

Born Millicent Hammond in New York City on February 25, 1910, she attended Foxcroft School in Virginia until she was fifteen when she accompanied her father as he served as United States Ambassador to Spain. Fenwick later attended Columbia University and the New School for Social Research in New York City.

While working in New York, Fenwick served from 1938 to 1947 on the board of education of Bernardsville, New Jersey, where she lived. After retiring from her publication job, she served on the Borough Council from 1958 to 1964 and was a member of the New Jersey Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She entered the state assembly in 1970 and served three years before she became director of New Jersey Consumer Affairs. In 1974 she narrowly defeated fellow Assembly member and future Governor, Thomas Kean, for the Republican nomination for the House of Representatives from New Jersey's Fifth District. After winning the general election she gained ever larger majorities in the three succeeding elections.

In her four terms, Fenwick served on a variety of committees and addressed herself to a surprising array of issues. In her first term, she was assigned to the Committee on Banking, Currency and Housing and the Committee on Small Business. She also served on the Committee on the District of Columbia, the Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Committee on Education and Labor, and the Select Committee on Aging. Although she was a fiscal conservative, on other matters she differed from many of her Republican colleagues. She supported the Equal Rights Amendment, federal funding for abortions, and the food stamp program. She worked to establish the Helsinki Commission on Human Rights and worked to eliminate the tax provision that penalized working couples. Fenwick was also interested in procedural reform of the House and served on the Ethics Committee during the investigation of Tongsun Park's attempts to influence Members of Congress.

Fenwick's personal style (she unabashedly smoked a pipe) and her combination of patrician manners, a frank, even blunt, willingness to offer opinions, and political convictions that defied easy categorization, gained her a national reputation enjoyed by few four-term Members. She even served as the model for the fictional Congresswoman Lacey Davenport in the "Doonesbury" cartoon series. Fenwick left the House when she was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for the Senate in 1982. From 1983 to 1987 she served as United States Representative, with rank of ambassador, to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture. She was a resident of Bernardsville, New Jersey, until her death on September 16, 1992.

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"You couldn't invent Millicent Fenwick. Lacey Davenport doesn't come close. She was unique. The best writers of fiction might have struggled to make her believable, but they would have failed.

She was an aristocrat of the kind Katharine Hepburn used to play in movies like The Philadelphia Story. Yet she had a particular affinity for the downtrodden, the poor, and the underprivileged. A liberal in her approach to most issues, she maintained a lifelong devotion to the Republican Party. Largely self-educated yet erudite, her trademark became her pipe. Running for national office for the first time in her mid-sixties, it took only two years for her to become one of the best-known and loved members of the United States Congress.

She was a national phenomenon and yet until now very little has been written about her, and nobody has pierced the veil that Millicent drew around her personal life. Because she was Millicent and because the press was in awe, she easily avoided questions she didn't want to answer. In an age of disclosure, I once heard a reporter ask, �Mrs. Fenwick, where does your money come from?� �The land, the land,� she replied. There was no follow-up. She never answered questions about her failed marriage or even her family.

She was smart politically and not above a trick or two to achieve her ends. Once, when we were debating, she finished her comments and sat down. I rose to reply. About three minutes in, I had the sense nobody in the audience was paying attention. I looked over at Millicent. She had taken out her pipe and was slowly filling it with tobacco. The entire audience was watching, waiting to see if she was actually going to light it. They weren't paying attention to anything I was saying. Millicent won that debate.

She was the only really ambitious seventy-year-old I've ever met. She loved serving in office, and whether in the state assembly or the United States Congress, she never ceased marveling that she had actually been chosen to represent the people. In legislative bodies she remained a maverick, but at home in Somerset County, she never went against the wishes of the county chairmen. And as much as she became a citizen of the world, she was never so much at peace as among her neighbors in Bernardsville. Beloved by many, she had few close friends.

Above all things, she hated hypocrisy and those who abused the public trust. Stubborn to a fault, she never betrayed her ideals or paid much attention to the polls. In the end, that was probably why she lost her last election, but the example she set and the way she conducted her life continue to stand as a model for all those who might want to pursue public life."

Thomas H. Kean
President of Drew University
Governor of New Jersey (1982-1990)

JOB APPROVAL POLLS

BOOKS

Title

Purchase

Contributor

Millicent Fenwick - HER WAY

Purchase

Not in Public Domain

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